Heading for the Sunshine Tour

At the beginning of November Holly asked me if I was going to the Sunshine Tour. I had had this at the back of my mind and this, and the fact that SST ask for a deposit in late November, focussed my thinking and I decided that to go for the month of February would be a good idea. It is expensive, but I felt it would give me a great goal, would really help Breakdance, probably help me work on my confidence, and hopefully allow us to make a great start to the year.

Towards the end of November I finally managed a visit to the Dynamic Performance Hub in Gloucestershire. The Hub is the brainchild of former dressage rider Dee So’oialo, whose ambition was to bring Equine Sports in line with other professional sports by providing an inclusive and holistic training centre. Dee’s state of art base at Newent and her rapidly expanding and impressive team provide Dynamic & biomechanic assessment of horse and rider, strength & fitness training, soft tissue & injury management for horse and rider, Pilates, sports psychology and nutrition. I spent a fascinating day, starting off feeling quite dramatically inadequate and progressing to a feeling of achievement and wanting to do it all again. Dee is an enthusiastic, empathetic and persuasive coach, and the whole team were fantastic. I left feeling that I couldn’t wait to go back. But Newent is a long way from Sussex, and I knew that once I was back competing it would become difficult to make regular trips to Gloucestershire. Luckily Laura Schroter at Spearhill Stud at Ashington is now an EQ Bands Accredited trainer much closer to home. Laura has lovely facilities, is a very accomplished eventer and dressage rider and was one of the first accredited trainers outside the hub itself.

I also continued to have sports psychology support from Jenni Winter-Leach at Flying Changes Mindset. This has been invaluable at addressing both the effects of having a few falls, and feeling more competitive and more able to concentrate on my performance.

The horses were progressing nicely with their fitness. We continued training with Alex Hempleman, mainly hiring the excellent facilities at Hascombe. Alex is really excellent at inspiring confidence, very perceptive with the horses and above all makes it fun so you work hard without really noticing.

By Christmas we were training regularly and had a fair few shows under our belts. Breakdance jumping regular double clears in Newcomers and Arietta was super consistent at Foxhunter.

I have worked really hard at my own fitness too. Working with Emma Varley at Kempt Lifestyle on weights and strength training, doing high intensity interval training on the treadmill, Pilates and swimming. As a result I feel much stronger both in and out of the saddle and much less tired, and much more confident. My original aim was to do something extra every day, but that’s too exhausting, so I now aim to do Pilates once a week, weights 2/3 times and running/swimming once.

The final self-care building block was an online appointment with Milly Boorman, the nutritionist at Dynamic Performance Hub. I eat very little meat, so I do struggle to have enough protein, and also I find eating regularly at shows difficult - that full tummy feeling combines badly with nerves and Adrenalin. Milly’s advice was excellent. I’ve swopped cereal for 2 eggs at breakfast. I top up my protein levels mid-morning and pre-workout with protein bars or shakes and I’ve found I have more energy and almost zero need for biscuits - formerly my favourite food. Most importantly I no longer go in the ring on zero fuel.

I always try to have the horses about two weeks ahead of the game with their fitness when preparing for a tour early in the year, and sure enough we did lose about 10 days of work over the Christmas and New Year period due to the very icy weather. This year after all the rain our school froze for several days, and the very wet roads were lethal. Luckily we were able to hire the indoor at Izzy Smith’s Silver Thatch Stables a couple of times which was invaluable.

The final blip in our preparations was that when the horses had their final check up with Ed Lyall 10 days before they were due to leave for Spain Arietta wasn’t very sound. A very bad surprise as she’s normally very tough, and very worrying. Maybe she’d jarred herself on the icy ground because luckily seven days later, with some of Ed’s excellent care and a second check up, she was absolutely fine, and we were all set to go.